My Jazz Revelation

I really hated modern jazz. There is no melody––or at least that is what I thought––just a diarrhea of sound that gave me a headache.

Well, as God would want it, my 17-year-old son is a fanatical aficionado of jazz. He plays the saxophone and studies jazz at a boarding school that specializes in music. Every summer he attends jazz summer camps. He practices his scales till his lips are swollen. He sleeps with jazz music playing on his computer all night long.

I, on the other hand, love folk music, which he absolutely hates. Once, when I was listening to Bulgarian women singing in harmony, he remarked that their singing sounded as if they were having “a real bad time with their period.”

As you can see, we were not really “sharing.”

But this summer, he asked me to join his summer jazz workshop at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. He wanted me to bring my accordion and learn to play jazz, so we could have something in common.

I took him on.

With trepidation: Not only did I hate this music, I also do not know how to read music. I play by ear and only in the C scale.

How was I going to fit in?

Upon arriving, I discovered that there were 400 bass, guitar, drum, piano, sax, and trombone players––but only one pitiful polka accordion player: me.

This is going to be humiliating, I thought.

But on the other hand, what an opportunity to be vulnerable, to get out of my safety zone and see what would happen.

Go and surprise yourself, I said to myself. And a surprise it was, proving that getting out of your safety zone can be a rewarding growth experience despite the pain.

The workshop was five days long, starting every day at 8 a.m. and ending after midnight with a concert and jam sessions.

Learning something totally new means being subjected to change, and change is like burying your past. So it should not come as a surprise that as part of the experience, you traverse the five stages of grief that Elizabeth Kubler Ross wrote about.

First was Denial: Why am I here? I do not even like jazz, etc. Then I moved to the Anger phase, becoming furious at my son for bringing me into a situation where I would certainly be humiliated by my ignorance.

On the second day, after Denial and Anger, I entered the Bargaining phase: If I just sit in a class and listen, maybe I will learn something.

Depression was next: I was assigned to a band. All the members were playing their instruments, while I just sat there like a mouse in the rain, hugging my accordion like a child clutching his teddy bear. I could not play anything. I was miserable.

I finally started enjoying the week after I entered the Acceptance stage: OK, so I am ignorant; so what?

Focus on your goal, I told myself. You did not come here to learn to play. You came to learn what jazz is all about and to bond with your son.

How easy it is to forget our goals and get sidetracked by experiences that overwhelm us.

And what did I learn?

I learned that jazz is a whole separate language of music.

If you listen to people conversing in a language you do not know––say, Wolof, which is spoken in Senegal––it will sound meaningless to you, like random sounds. But once you learn the language, then you start understanding the conversation.

Playing jazz in a combo is a musical conversation. And like any language, it has rules and a structure. Jazz even has “dialects”: the rules for playing bebop are different from the rules for swing, cool jazz, or free jazz. It is the same language––a bebop musician will understand what a cool jazz musician is playing––but each has a unique musical construct.

You really know a language when you can tell a joke in that language. And jazz has its own sense of humor: Sometimes in their “conversations,” the solo instruments tease each other musically, and by the time they finish playing everyone is laughing.

Contrary to what I always believed, there is a melody in jazz, and it is played first. Then each player in his or her turn improvises on the chords of that melody. That is the structure––the sequence of the chords following the melody––but there are countless improvisations each player can make within each chord. Thus, although they are playing the same piece, they usually do not repeat the same music. Using language as an analogy, we would say that if several people tell the same story, each would tell it differently.

Thus, jazz is a structured form of creativity. Each player is, in a sense, a composer, but since the musicians all play together there must be a structure that unites their playing.

This reminded me of the Adizes methodology for team problem-solving: Each participant has and follows his own distinct style, free to make his unique contribution, while Adizes provides the structure to lead the discussion so that the team can work together.

At one of the performances that week, a very famous musician gave what I thought was a terrible performance: high, shrill sounds on the sax that sounded more like screams than like music.

Who taught him to play? I wondered, and how can he be famous when he can’t even get normal sounds out of his instrument?

The next day at breakfast, I mentioned to another sax player that I thought the previous night’s performance had been embarrassing. I had seriously thought of leaving during the intermission.

He looked at me as if he was a Muslim and I had just told him I’d burned the Koran.

“What are you talking about? I had tears in my eyes!” he exclaimed. “It was an unbelievable experience. It was a privilege to listen to him.”

Now I felt like a person who discovers his pants are torn and his rear end is showing … without underwear …

The musician the previous night had been playing “free jazz,” which has no rules. The instrument is manipulated to express the musician’s feelings. Honestly. Openly. Truly. Freely. All his pain, despair, anger, and hope.

The man was falling apart emotionally and telling it to us through the sounds he was creating.

Oh my God, I said to myself. I realized I needed to (and I did) apologize to my son. His music was his way of communicating his feelings to me; when I criticized his music, in a sense I was criticizing, possibly even negating, his feelings.

Whoa …

And what did I learn from this?

To have a smaller mouth and bigger ears. To talk less and hear more. Not to judge at all––period. There is a reason for everything that happens. Just watch and experience. Think less. Feel more.

And that is exactly how good jazz musicians play.

When they practice, they will play scales, chords, up and down and back and forth, for hours. But when they are improvising, they do not think about what to play. They simply allow the music to take its own path.

When jazz musicians improvise, perhaps they are themselves acting as instruments, to allow something bigger (God?) to come through.

This reminds me of meditation: The goal is to calm your mind and let your heart speak––your heart, where God dwells.

Bio-energetic healing, which I recently studied, is similar: You are not the healer. You make yourself a conduit for cosmic energy, which passes through you to heal your patient. And the same for Reiki.

And come to think of it, the same is true for everything we do creatively. I have this experience when I write. Like right now: I am not thinking about what to say. It just flows out of me, if I let it, by not thinking and not judging. Thinking blocks the energy. Our egos interfere with the creative process.

It helps to see ourselves as instruments of something larger. We are like the saxophone, which does not perform. It is the instrument with which the player communicates.

Ah, thinking like this makes you humble. It is not you who are great. (Golda Meir once remarked to someone: “Don’t be so humble. You are not that great.”)

You can become greater by being humble and understanding that it is God that does it all––God as endless cosmic energy with consciousness of right and wrong.

Last month I attended a conference in which a very eloquent ex-CEO of a large company in Latin America talked about an author that changed his life many years ago, I looked up this person’s name (Wayne Dyer)in youtube and found a very interesting conference he gave in PBS. It is largely based on the same concept of a larger force (or energy as you called it) that when one is in flow with it, one is but an instrument of a higher conciousness. It was a new concept for me and I found it very interesting to see the large coincidence with you comments.

Ichak, I SO love reading your insights. How lucky your family is that you are so open and willing to be vulnerable. I once heard that God gives is 1 mouth and 2 ears so that we talk less and listen more. I truly believe that. Love to everyone and how tremendous for Sassa to continue on his journey to being a brilliant musician. He and his gift will be a blessing for the world. Xxoo Meryl

I enjoy reading you’r article very much but this one realy took me. I dance and teach Nia for a living and the expereance of writing you described is the exact experience I have while dancing. Not thinking, planning or ocupating my mind with ‘how do I look’. Just leting the movement flow out of me and let myself become a pipeline to express something biger than me. thank you for putting my feelings into words.

Thank you for your love, courage, and willingness to be vulnerable. I am a 74 year old musician “wanabe” who, earlier this month participated in a Jazz camp sponsored by Coast Music Conservatory, a music school owned by my three musical daughters. I was stretch beyond my musical limits. The result was that I learned to understand and play jazz piano a bit better but more than that, I felt new levels of aliveness, joy and comradeship while loosing 6 pound in 5 days. Does live get any better than that?

I am glad you found out about the melody in Jazz. Jazz went from dance music to listening music in the age of bebop. Just as you mentioned, if you listen you can learn lots. However, it takes work to quell your inner urge to tell rather than ask questions to learn. I was once told if you want to control the communication process you ask questions.

I am finishing my master studies (Quality Management) at the Faculty of Technology in Skopje. My professor suggested that i should read one of your books, “Mastering Change:
The Power of Mutual Trust and Respect in Personal Life, Family Life, Business and Society”.
To be honest, i never dreamed that one book could have such influence at me. I am looking to buy another one of your books, “Managing Corporate Lifecycles: How and Why Corporations Grow and Die and What to Do About It”, which i also have no doubt that will help in my self-improvement, primary as human!
The reason i choose to comment, is because i am also a musician who doesn’t like jazz:) I will try and open my mind and try to understand the jazz way of communication!

Thank you for inspiring me, and many other! I hope you will manage to organize some seminar in Skopje, i would be more than happy to participate!

You are very brave and strong to let to yourselves such un transperent and honest way of dealing all your intimite filings and thoughts with us.

I must admit, that you helped me many times with your wisdom and courage.

This time you folowed your son to beter understand him. Leaving your safe cone!

With this you forced your knowledge to subordinate to something, your son is mastering. So you support him to build the world that not already exist.

The problem with (fre) jazz is for me the problem of harmonization. You (and also me) are working on integration , which is not possible without akcepted common structure. Being together is not a “free jazz”. It is perhaps being together with yourselves and God, but not with other people. We need to know to be together and to be allone. Free jazz for me is for being allone.

I let me to write down without thinking (as you did). And perhapse it is obvious 🙂

Amazing story. It tells so much about music, it’s effects, the frequently faulty communication between parents and children, the concept of one just being an instrument to a greater anergy when creation is taking place (Keith Richards said something very similar once), and in general, the huge, magnificent in its harmony and dissonance that the musical piece of our lives can be.

I think that experience shows that listening is very important and requires a certain posture.

It also demonstrates that to listen (really listen) requires preparation (if the sound is difficult or the matter is complex …). Do not just be open. You have to be awake.

Believing that we know what is being said (or shown), maybe we not listen the truth.

Believing that you know, you can lose the opportunity to listen carefully and detachment, you can lose the chance to learn, and change.

Of course, sometimes we really already know. It happens. This is the trap.

The worst is: how more we know more chance of not listening.

Trying to connect this experience with the Method, I think of it as “Managerial Deafness.”

Thank you.

PS: I loved the text. One of the best moments: “…I discovered that there were 400 bass, guitar, drum, piano, sax, and trombone players–but only one pitiful polka accordion player: me.
This is going to be humiliating…” hahahahaha !

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Please note:

The insights presented in these blogs are the personal insight of Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes and do not necessarily express the opinion or position of the Adizes Institute or its staff individually or as a group.

DISCLAIMER: The insights presented in these blogs are the personal insight of Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes and do not necessarily express the opinion or position of the Adizes Institute or its staff individually or as a group.